Goldstein had pulled it off. Logistics Command had managed to locate 6 warp tugs close enough to Enterprise to make it there on time. One burned out its warp engines trying to make the rendezvous but the other five made it and it turned out only four were really necessary. With an assist from the Enterprise's functioning engine systems they managed to move Enterprise a fraction of a light year from the path of the Borg ships. It wasn't all that far but space is big and Goldstein increased the odds in his ships favor by sending four warp shuttles to lay down a trail of charged particles for the Borg to follow.

By the time the Borg realized their error they were six days beyond the Enterprise and Enterprise's most basic repairs were finished in four.

One thing Goldstein had learned from Tower was the importance of returning the crew to a normal operating pattern. Once Enterprise was relatively safe he began standing the crew down and sending various shifts off duty for a good meal and some sleep, himself included.

Taking the ship had turned into a bloody mess. Two of the men guarding it had to be killed and a third had a severely wounded lower leg. Severe enough he would probably lose it below the knee. Sarnow took a round that carved a nasty groove along his side but he was still ambulatory. Townsend suffered a clean thru and thru in the thigh while Tower had two nicks in the right shoulder and another in the right hip. Only Sedek had come through the brief firefight unscathed. He dragged the two dead soldiers clear of the landing area and chained the uninjured one close enough to the one with the leg injury so he could take care of him until help arrived.

The four of them set to work clearing the ship of booby traps and various surprises meant to prevent someone (namely them) from commandeering it.

Sarnow stood guard while the other three worked. After an hour it was time.

"Think we got them all?" Tower asked. "A high probability sir." Sedek replied while studying several instruments he had modified for his use. "Three separate booby traps and special override systems plus at least two more that I believe they were working on but had not completed. "We've checked every major and most minor systems. I'd stake my reputation on it being safe to lift off." He concluded.

"Then let's do it." Tower decided. "Get Sarnow in here. Then seal the hatches and bring the engines online. Four days here is four too many. I'll handle the takeoff. Townsend start the calculations for warp speed travel. Sedek see what this thing has in the way of weapons and defense. Not that I plan to engage in any more combat but who can say. " Tower went to the control cabin and smoothly slid into what was obviously the pilots station.

Sarnow came in the control cabin and secured his weapon before slumping heavily into one of the chairs near Tower. He was holding his side in obvious pain. "For the first time I'm looking forward to a bed in sickbay. I'm so tired they won't even have to put me under to fix this." He said with a slight nod toward to his bloody left side. "I'm just going to lay down and let the surgeon get to work!" he finished as he reclined the chair as much as possible, leaning his head back.

"Think you can hang on for another 18 hours? If we can spin this thing up to Warp 7.5 we should make it by then."

Enterprise continued to close on the fleeing Romulan ship. It was a venerable Gallant Wing class heavy cruiser. Analysts had long claimed that a battle between one of them and one of Starfleets Constitution class ships would be a near even match.

Everyone was about to find out.

Enterprise fired a salvo of three photon torpedos. The Gallant Wing took evasive action, sliding down and to port then back to starboard. It also cut loose with dozens of shots from its rear disruptor banks. One torpedo very narrowly missed the Romulan ship, detonating close enough to its port side to jar it badly.

A second torpedo was hit by the frantic disruptor shots and its engine was disabled. But the third torpedo bore in and struck the shield protecting the starboard engine and support pylon. The explosion was titanic and the Romulan ships warp field quickly began to fade.

As it slipped to sublight its impulse engines ignited with an almost audible howl and a scream over subspace. The Gallant Wing slewed about. Now it was trying not only to evade fire from Enterprise but to bring its own massive forward firepower to bear.

Even as the Gallant Wing was only halfway through its turn it launched one of its immensely destructive plasma torpedoes. The Romulan then snapped into an even harder turn to starboard, it forward disruptors lashing out at the Enterprise as the larger ship slowed to sublight. The Romulan was attempting to force Enterprise to evade back into the path of the plasma torpedo but the captain saw through the tactic. At his command Enterprise pitched upward and to starboard A series of narrow beam phaser blasts erupted from both the upper and lower centers of the saucer section.

The concentrated beams carved a path across the Gallant Wing's primary hull, tearing through the forward disruptor mounts and the forward housing for the plasma weapon. The Gallant Wing's primary weapons were disabled but it wasn't quite helpless. Its disruptors covering the aft and flanking arcs pounded at Enterprise with all the fury they could muster.

Enterprise's shields weakened substantially and series of control board short circuited but injuries to the crew were relatively minor. Enterprise backed off somewhat and fired two short range torpedoes.

Both hit.

The Gallant Wing's port warp engine shattered. A series of explosions rippled across the entire aft section. Enterprise quickly dropped its shields and moved into transporter range. Energizing its transporter and scanning the Romulan ship the crew began beaming Romulan survivors aboard six at a time every time the transporters cycled. Enterprise managed to extract 53 Romulans out of the 330 man crew before a final series of explosions left the ship a drifting dead hulk.

Unfortunately, four of the Romulans died of their injuries and another two committed suicide before Enterprise security could render them unconscious.

For the Enterprise crew it was pure victory. A major foray into a sensitive sector decisively repulsed. A major enemy fleet unit eliminated and best of all nearly four dozen living Romulan prisoners including three officers. Enterprise security quickly separated the officers from the rest and quartered them in individual compartments while the rest were put in secured quarters in groups of two and three on the theory that the Romulans were much more likely to speak among themselves. All the compartments heavily monitored of course both obviously and covertly. Despite the time and effort required to do so, Enterprise security changed the grouping of the Romulan prisoners every few hours knowing full well such changes were likely to spark conversation among them.

Enterprise security changed the groupings of the Romulan prisoners every twelve hours or so knowing that it would spark conversation between them as they were eager to share what they had learned and find out what the other prisoners knew.

It worked as well as the captain's battle strategy worked.

When the Enterprise transferred the prisoners to a border starbase several days later they had literally hundreds of hours of recorded conversations among the Romulans for Starfleet intelligence to analyze.

Before the Enterprise left the area the crew tractored several thousand tons of debris from the Romulan heavy cruiser into the hangar bay. Most of it was useless of course, but a nearly intact computer module and a segment of power transfer conduit proved invaluable. Combined with the recordings of the Romulan prisoners and the sensor readings during the battle, Federation knowledge of Romulan heavy cruisers increased ten fold.

By the time the Enterprise officers finished with their debriefing, Starfleet Command was handing out medals by the bucket full.....

"Caspars!!" Sarnow called out excitedly from the long range sensor monitoring station.

"Great" Tower said to himself. Their approach to Deneva would be anything but easy. He had hoped the drone starships could not be deployed in this system yet. But it looked like the officers who had seized control of the heartworlds of the Federation had been much more advanced in their planning than anyone had anticipated.

"Show me!" Tower barked. A moment later the viewscreen and the supplementary monitors came alive with images of the ships bearing down on Enterprise.

Ten starships. Two separate groups of five. Each one centered around a modified Sovereign class starship. They looked like the regular Sovereigns except for far fewer windows since they were virtually always unmanned. The warp nacelle pylons were shorter, stouter, more difficult to damage. And on the upper rear of the primary hull saucer was a sleek looking weapons pod with eight pulse compression phaser cannons, six forward and two aft.

Each of the Caspar Sovereigns were escorted by four Defiant class variants. Not that different from the older Defiant class as they were nearly completely automated anyway.

Townsend swiveled in her chair toward Tower. "I've got solid scans sir. Looks like the Sovereigns in the middle of each formation are carrying at least 4-5,000 torpedos of various types. Ten times the loadout for a regular ship. They can open fire at maximum range and keep pouring it on all day long."

"I just don't understand why your people continue trying to provoke a conflict with the Federation? Our fleet is twice the size of yours and we have four or five times as many habitable worlds. Why are you such gluttons for punishment? Your people couldn't beat Earth and its handful of colonies and that was back when the Empire was one of the most battle-tested in the known galaxy. What makes you think you could defeat the Federation now?

The Romulan offered up his equivalent of an arrogant sneer.

"Don't be foolish." he said. "In the Romulan/Earth War, the Andorian Clan of Combat gave direct military support to you. Vulcan scientists and engineers developed most of your technology and the Tellarites helped finance Earths war effort."

"And in another war not only would they be onboard but we could add in Centaurus, Deneva, Rigel, Deneb....you get the idea." Sarnow responded.

Tower read a short passage from the science fiction novel he had purchased recently.

From a distance his crew looked resplendent in their cleaned, pressed and matched uniforms. It was only when you got close that you realized they were not uniforms at all. They had not had the time or resources to manufacture and issue any. The uniforms were actually scrounged and assembled from scores of uniforms of prisoners of war and wealthy civilians who had been released with their lives and health intact if not their wardrobes and dignity. Still, it was obvious the crew took great pride in attempting to make themselves look like a veteran military unit.

What did match precisely in his crew were the expressions and body language. Proud stances of bodies which had fought and won for a cause alongside their brothers. The forward lean of soldiers ready to do it all again without fear, without question. The looks on their faces more than compensated for the sometimes hodgepodge nature of their dress.

All were armed though their weapons were no more uniform than their "uniforms". All the sidearms were carefully cleaned and shined. All holstered, strapped down or held as though they were. Virtually all were ones best suited for each crew member. The best they could find, steal or otherwise acquire. The captain had no doubt that each of their hand weapons had a long body count attached to them.

Several of the crew had been seriously injured in the recent fighting and the medical kits aboard useful for humans was appallingly small. But doc had shown a gift for medical improvisation equal to anything the engineers had done. The captain noticed a man who had lost his hand and forearm. Doc had already set him up with a mechanical prosthetic hand. The fingers operated by the flexing the elbow.

Tower switched from the novel to something more concrete.: A passage from "The History of the Earth/Romulan War".One of the most famous starships named Excelsior was the command ship of Admiral Carlos Larson of the Earth Defense Force. The modified Daedalus II class ship was most noted for the Battle of Gamma Hydra in which it was the only ship on either side to survive out of a total of 94 Earth ships and 146 Romulan vessels.

Excelsior was leading a force of 12 ships to reinforce 82 Earth ships which were engaged by the 146 Romulan ships before Admiral Larson's force arrived. All 82 Earth ships were destroyed though 3 were salvaged later by Larson's task force. Fifty eight Romulan ships were destroyed and dozens more were damage. Task Force Sierra led by the U.S.S. Excelsior arrived after the battle. After the Romulan ships had departed in fact.

Task Force Sierra rescued several hundred survivors from among the destroyed Earth ships and managed to restore three of the vessels for immediate use. But a more elaborate rescue and salvage effort not to mention a detailed look at the Romulan ships or the Romulans themselves was thwarted by the delayed detonation of several Romulan high yield self destruct warheads which heavily irradiated a wide area for a time.

Admiral Larson and the 15 ships now under his command set off in pursuit of Romulan fleet six times their number which outgunned them four to one. Larson devised a brilliant plan that took maximum advantage of his small fleets one clear edge over the Romulans and that was mobility. He divided his 15 ships into two groups of four ships each while retaining the powerful Excelsior with six other starships.

The two small groups skirted the flanks of the advancing Romulan force without being detected while Larson and the battle group built around Excelsior circumvented the Romulan force entirely to attack the fleet head on. With precise timing the two small groups attacked the rear quarters of many of the trailing Romulan ships many of which had unrepaired damage from the earlier battle.

The attacks by the two groups pulled more than two dozen Romulan ships out of formation, the Excelsior group then stormed into the heart of the remaining Romulan ships in extremely tight formation, the Earth ships maneuvering almost as one. Larson maneuvered his seven ships to concentrate repeatedly on groups of two, three and four Romulan ships, quickly overwhelming them in detail.

Larson pushed the Excelsior to the absolute limit, destroying 10 Romulan ships outright and assisting in the destruction of 6 more. The battle reached its conclusion as the mortally wounded U.S.S. Quincy rammed two Romulan vessels as they closed in and the explosions of all three ships engulfed and destroyed a third Romulan ship. At about the same time Excelsior was surrounded and under fire from four Romulan ships. Excelsior held its fire for several long seconds as its weapons recharged but finally unleashed a sustained barrage that exploded all four Romulan ships in turn.

Nine Romulan ships remained but they intercepted a series of false subspace messages from the Excelsior to a supposed Earth fleet arriving as reinforcements intent on capturing some Romulan ships intact. The nine Romulan ships self destructed rather than risk capture.

Nearly 9,000 crewmen died in the loss of the 93 Earth ships with about 400 survivors packed aboard Excelsior plus the Excelsior's 125 man crew. As many as 7,000 Romulans died with the 146 ships in their fleet.

In only five days of combat, Earth had lost more than a years worth of starship production. The Romulan losses were equally devastating. For Admiral Larson and the remarkable crew of the Excelsior there was no time to rest or celebrate. After taking barely 48 hours to transfer wounded and excess personnel to support ships and to patch up the worst of the damage, the Excelsior spent the next 6 months patroling the Gamma Hydra sector alone before being relieved by a three ship task force.

Admiral Larson would go down as Earth's greatest military leader of the war. He would engage and be victorious in six more major battles before being reassigned as an instructor at the newly founded Starfleet Academy with double duty as Starfleets Chief of Operations. Decades later Larson was honored by Starfleet naming one of its most numerous destroyer classes after him.

Ironically, though the debris fields near Gamma Hydra would've been a boon for Starfleet Intelligence only a single brief mission entered the area in the following years. Instead the scores of wrecked ships became a boon for treasure hunters and adventurers after the radiation died down.

Hundreds of thousands of artifacts showed up at markets across the galaxy for decades after....

excerpt from "Starfleet: An Organizational History of the Order of Battle"

Starfleet, as we know it today evolved directly from the Earth Defense Force of the Earth/Romulan War era. Though it is interesting to note that even back then, EFT was routinely simply referred to as "the starfleet" or simply "starfleet". The codification of the term after the Articles of Federation were approved was simple official acknowledgement of what had existed for decades.

When the Earth/Romulan War began, Starfleet operated starship classes divided into four main types: Scouts, Destroyers, Light Cruisers, and Heavy Cruisers. Of course several other auxiliary and support ship types were also in service. This division of the fleet served well throughout the 31 years of the Earth/Romulan War. Virtually all Starfleet ships larger than a destroyer were far superior to the Romulan vessels one on one with much of the Romulan success coming due to a combination of vastly superior numbers, shorter logical lines, and fanatically aggressive strategies and tactics.

Some 50 years after the Earth/Romulan War, a fifth ship type was added. The frigate. The frigate was conceived of a starship combining the weapons and defenses of a light cruiser (sometimes even a heavy cruiser) on a hull the size of a destroyer with the idea of possessing the firepower of the former along with the mobility of the latter.

The addition of the frigate classes would turn out to be both fortunate and prophetic. During the Four Years War with the Klingons that erupted just a few decades later, Starfleet frigates bore the brunt of the fighting being engaged in more than half of the ship to ship combat actions of the war fighting Klingon warships both smaller and far larger than their own rating.

For more than a century, Starfleet had found no need for more powerful vessels than its heavy cruisers. Aside from a handful of specialized battleship type designs mainly built as experimental one offs during the Earth/Romulan War, the largest class of more powerful vessels was the mysterious "Prism" class warships of which not everything is known to this day. Only five of those vessels were constructed.

Ironically it was a peacetime situation rather than war that prompted the construction (or conversion) of Starfleet battlecruisers, battleships, and dreadnoughts. After the Four Years War ended, the Klingon Imperial Fleet deployed more than one hundred D-7 heavy cruisers and its variants with hundreds more on the way. The D-7s reliability and ease of maintenance ensured that once in service these ships would be around for ages. And the Klingons (later the Romulans) routinely deployed their D-7s (or equivalents) in squadrons of three.

Starfleet at that time had only fourteen of the top of the line Constitution class heavy cruisers. Combat experience had shown that while a Constitution could easily defeat a single D-7 cruiser, a squadron of three D-7s could easily overpower a Constitution class ship. Potentially destroying it, damaging it severely, or at least forcing it to flee. This was a huge problem as Starfleet normally operated its Constitutions alone, unsupported in order to maximize the amount of territory these ships covered.

During the Four Years War this was not an issue as the heavy cruisers normally operated along with a number of frigates and destroyers to support it. But with a prolonged period of peace now possible, this reality made it quite possible that the Klingons would be able to greatly restrict the reach of Starfleet without firing a shot.

So programs to develop starships capable of defeating a squadron of three D-7 heavy cruisers alone and unsupported were put into development. Thus the ship types battlecruiser, battleship, and dreadnoughts were born. In the case of dreadnoughts and some battleships, they were designed to defeat two squadrons of D-7 heavy cruisers alone and unsupported.

"Mobile Armored Surgical Hospital" was what it stood for Tower thought. He had watched the shows for the last four years. Probably a hundred or more had been produced.

He heard that originally "MASH" was a television show in the 20th century centered on some obscure military conflict in Asia. The current version was updated considerably. It took place on a medical center space station near the fighting during the Earth Romulan War some two centuries ago. Even after all these years of watching Tower was amazed at how primitive the medical treatment was. No stasis fields to save severely injured people for future treatment. Very little in the way of nanosurgery. Hell they were using old fashioned 3-D printers to create artificial organs!!

Beyond that Tower could not understand the seemingly antiwar, anti military feelings of the characters like Hawkeye and Trapper John! I mean come on this was the Romulans who had attacked! Why were they complaining about doing their jobs so much?

"Attention! Incoming wounded! Shuttles arriving in all three bays! Both surgical shifts to the OR!", the public address announcement opened this editions action....

Tower finished watching the MASH edition with great satisfaction. It had focused on an officer coming to the 4077 for treatment for a minor condition. He was a relentlessly aggressive commander whom Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan fawned over.

Hawkeye and Trapper found out that the officer was very reckless and his unit was suffering a far greater number of causalities than it should. Hawkeye and Trapper conspired to perform an unnecessary, major surgery on the guy in order to lay him up in recovery for so long that he lost his command. Too bad they didn't have any stasis fields. They could've popped him in one and left him for as long as needed no harm done.

Unnecessary surgery meant all kinds of ethical questions of course. Fortunately, in a clever and hilarious plot twist they manipulated Frank Burns into performing the surgery instead.

Trapper had asked Hawkeye "How long do you think he'll be laid up?" Hawkeye replied "It should be 4 weeks but with Frank doing it, probably 12".

Tower was really looking forward to the next edition . The coming attractions indicated it was an episode where the station "bugged out" and had to be towed to a new location due to advancing Romulan forces. That plot line was rare and Tower thought it had only been used twice before in the series. Plus the next episode seemed to focus on Radar and Commander Blake heavily.

Tower liked Commander Blake. He was similar to Father Mulcahy. A little naive and sometimes clueless but generally well meaning and reliable.

One thing that is noted about the Cylons was that though they were better known as cybernetic organisms or "cyborgs" and the robotic looking forms of the warriors (so called centurions) Cylons were in fact born wholly biological. "Born" being an euphemism given that Cylons are a variant of reptiles and actually hatch from eggs. Though thanks to their technology they do not suffer from the same vulnerabilities as regular cold blooded reptiles.

When a Cylon hatches they have a wholly biological rudimentary brain. When a Cylon reaches a certain level of growth a "brain" is implanted. This "brain" is an entirely artificial construct though with some biological components. It was suggested in "War of the Gods" that his technology was provided by the race of advanced beings similar or including Count Iblis. These "one brain" Cylons make up the vast, vast bulk of all Cylon warriors and civilian workers. At the time this "one brain" is implanted testing reveals whether a Cylon will in the future be suitable for additional brains to be implanted. Some evidence suggests only an very tiny percentage (1/1,000) are suitable. Once a Cylons artificial brain is implanted it is implied that the original rudimentary brain they are born with atrophies greatly and is effectively no longer used.

All Cylons suitable for additional brains become warriors and almost always form a kind of "officer corps" among Cylons. It was noted by the Imperious Leader himself in "The Cylon Death Machine/The Gun On Ice Planet Zero" that such Cylons tend to be far more aggressive and daring in battle than their fellow "one brainers" which means that combat tends to "weed out" a great many multi brain compatible Cylons over time.

Eventually at some point, evidence indicates there is no one size fits all standard or it is related to age or experience, the Cylons who can handle a second artificial brain have one implanted. These move steadily up the ranks in the Cylon armed forces though they still engage in and lead in combat at the forefront of battle which further serves to kill off many.

When (if) the two brains start coordinating, in effect working as a single very powerful brain, the Cylon is elevated to Executive Officer status. Executive Officer Cylons no longer serve in front line combat but command major bases and Cylon fleets. Many serve near the Imperious Leader himself and have direct regular access to him.

The Imperious Leader has complete authority to choose their successors and often choose one and several possible alternates long before they die, are killed, or step aside. It is believed that though very rare some Imperious Leaders have "retired" most often after reaching extreme old age. The chosen successors to the Imperious Leader invariably come from the ranks of the Executive Officer Cylons and once they rise to the rank of Imperious Leader they have their third and final artificial brain implanted.

In "The Cylon Death Machine/The Gun on Ice Planet Zero" it is noted that the Cylon in command of the planetoid where the Ravashol Pulsar is based, Vulpa, had been selected as the successor to the Imperious Leader and his posting to the garrison there was part of the Imperious Leader's effort to "reform" Vulpa's reputation after he had impudently suggested to the Imperious Leader that Cylons abandon pursuing the humans. It is further suggested that it was Vulpa who modified the gigantic Ravashol Pulsar from its original purpose as basically a gigantic laser transmitter to transmit vast amounts of knowledge around the galaxy into a incredibly powerful weapon.

It should be noted that while all Imperious Leaders are three brained Cylons, not all three brained Cylons become Imperious Leader. Some Cylons have a third brain implanted who were not selected to become Imperious Leader. These
"non Imperious Leader third brained Cylons" are very rare but often extremely long lived and come from the ranks of Cylon Executive Officers who have served in their positions for a time far longer than usual. These three brained Cylons normally travel with the Imperious Leader and serve as the Cylon equivalent of a "sounding board".

It should be noted that in addition to "regular" Cylon centurions encountered by humans in combat there are a number of fully robotic Cylon "drones" which are virtually indistinguishable from centurions with the exceptions that they mass only about one third as much and are capable of much faster movement. They also are much easier to kill than the cybernetic centurions and sometimes make horrendous tactical errors.

Captain Carson Tower gazed out at a portion of his families fleet of warships. It was against Federation law for private individuals or organizations like the family corporation from owning and/or operating starships with anything beyond the most basic of defensive armaments but as with all laws there were loopholes. One such loophole concerned ships built for potential purchase by Starfleet. A shipyard could build a prototype or proof of concept ship and offer it to Starfleet for sale or for the license to build more of the vessels in the future but if Starfleet rejected the ship the ownership of it reverted to its manufacture. So the Tower shipyards would build very powerful starships and offer them up to Starfleet for potential sale but construct them with obvious design flaws. Once Starfleet rejected the ship, it was returned to the possession of the shipyard which quickly fixed its flaws and behold, the Tower family corporation had a new starship!

Of course everyone was aware of what the family was doing but lawyers on both sides took the issue "under consideration" and no one wanted it really resolved. Carson's father Mackenzie Tower had always used his private Starfleet responsibly and quietly. Mainly using it to conduct search and rescues, transport vitally needed supplies, and in the wilder sections of space providing a measure of law and order. Above all he had his fleet stay out of Starfleets way. Though it was often Federation authorities who "requested" some kind of mission be performed by Tower's ships that they didn't necessarily want Starfleet officially involved in.

Most of the officers serving aboard Tower's warships were former Starfleet while the lower ranks were filled from the best of the Tower commercial fleet.

As Carson watched a ship that he knew was classified as a "heavy transport" drift by. But Carson could tell that even from the most cursory look that the ship was an outsized version of the famous Defiant class escort. It was probably capable of carrying just enough SCUs (Standard Cargo Units) to justify the "transport" in its classification but mainly it was a platform for pulse compression phasers and "probe launchers" which were loaded mainly with quantum torpedoes. Tower didn't envy anyone who tried to seize the ship thinking they would make off with valuable cargo.

Tower tried to get some sleep as the rain continued. Not hard but steady. The otherwise dark night occasionally interrupted by flashes of lightning and rumblings of thunder. His field jacket was lined and rain resistant though he wouldn't want to test it against many of these downpours. The temperature was pretty cold. Hovering somewhere between freezing and merely uncomfortable. Fortunately he had found a plank to sleep on which kept him off the wet ground and gave him some hopes of staying reasonably warm. His boots were heated which meant his feet were probably the warmest part of his body right now. In addition the phaser strapped to his right hip was emitting some warmth that was better than nothing. He and the other members of his team could've used the phasers to heat some of the rocks around them but no one wanted to give away their positions by accidentally creating an infrared signature that stood out from the background.

Tower was using a rather large though smooth rock as an improvised pillow. If he recalled the stories he had heard, there was something in the Bible about a man sleeping with a rock for a pillow. He then dreamed about a ladder to heaven or something along those lines though Tower couldn't for a moment remember the significance of the story. Nothing beyond how the "rock for a pillow" seemed to have parallels with his own situation. The stirrings in the rain streaked darkness told him that the other seven members of the team trying to sleep were not having any more success than he was. Two other team members stood guard, walking the perimeter, their rifles unslung and at the ready.

The other two teams his was matched up with had won the coin tosses and they were sleeping more comfortably inside the vehicles which were spread out over a hundred meters or so. When they started moving in the early morning hours on the other hand his team automatically got to ride inside

But those are science labs. Carson Tower doesn't need science. He has guns.

Click to expand...

Actually Tower is very interested in science. Because only science can produce better weapons. Just as he is interested in seeking out new worlds and new civilizations because that is the way you find new allies, new resources to continue the fight.

Besides which, the fourth one down is an engineering room and the fifth one down is a library.

The rain was getting steadily harder. Hard enough that the sound of it plinking against his field jacket and hood was fast going from a welcome, almost pleasant distraction to annoying enough to keep him from falling asleep. The sounds in the darkness of his other team members stirring indicated they felt the same. A couple of them got to their feet, apparently looking to find better protected spots to bed down. Ensign Sultana quickly sized up the hopelessness of the situation, rolled up her bedding and set out with determination slightly downhill into the darkness.

Tower himself determined not to move. He had already struggled too hard to get comfortable between the cold and the rain and the rain getting heavier wasn't going to cause him to risk that comfort. Tower finally nodded off but was woken by the sound of a heavy vehicle engine growing louder in the darkness. A check of his chrono told him almost an hour had passed since Sultana had set off. The bulk of a large wheeled vehicle loomed briefly in the darkness, none of its lights were on in the visible spectrum so he imagined the driver was using infrared to see. It was a large truck mainly used to carry supplies for the various teams and combat vehicles.
Sultana stuck her head out the drivers window and yelled "The hotel has arrived guys! Check in and rack out!"

Tower and the remaining team members quickly grabbed their gear and clambered inside the large vehicle. There were two rows of three seats each including that for the driver where Sultana was sitting plus two more could fit into the small covered cargo area. Ahmed and Tavor both took the cargo space with Tavor gesturing Tower to the far right seat in the second row saying "take that one sir" to Tower. The seats reclined somewhat and Tower used the centuries old technique of increasing his leg room by crossing his ankles.

A few minutes of stirring took place while the eight very grateful soldiers settled in and got comfortable as well as saying thanks to Sultana for her initiative. Sultana was the shortest of the group so despite the drivers controls she had few problems snuggling back into the seat. They were lucky was one of Tower's last waking thoughts. The rain had really intensified. Fortunately the two team members outside on guard duty had some level of protection standing next to either side of the truck. Not that they had to be very vigilant anymore. The truck had its own passive sensor suite that would sound a warning long before they could see anything in the rain and gloom.

Tower leaned his head against the cool transparent aluminum of the window. The rain tapping on it was once more a pleasant distraction.....

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